At first blush, it seems obvious that a picture could reveal your location. A picture of you standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge sensibly leads to the conclusion you're in the San Francisco Bay Area when the photo was taken. But now that smartphones are quickly supplanting traditional digital cameras, and even traditional cameras now have wifi built in, many more pictures are finding their way onto the web, in places like Twitter, Flickr, Google+ and Tumblr.

New data from law enforcement agencies across the country has confirmed what EFF has long been afraid of: while police are routinely using cell phone location tracking information, only a handful of agencies are bothering to obtain search warrants.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that warrantless installation of GPS devices violates the Fourth Amendment – United States v. Jones (PDF) – is already percolating through the court system, which is good news for our privacy rights. Today, in a two sentence order (PDF), the Ohio Supreme Court vacated a lower court's opinion that upheld the installation of a GPS device without a warrant, and ordered the court to apply Jones. EFF and a number of civil liberties organizations filed an amicus brief (PDF) in the Ohio case last year, urging just such a result.